Cyanide killings can confound investigators

The body of Urooj Khan is moved from his gravesite into a hearse at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago today. (John J. Kim)

It could be weeks before investigators know what, if any, clues were buried with Urooj Khan in Rosehill Cemetery six months ago after the million-dollar lottery winner died of cyanide poisoning.

Police find themselves in largely uncharted territory investigating such a rare method for murder, though Chicago, of course, is home to the nation's most infamous cyanide case — the 1982 Tylenol killings, which remain unsolved.

But in a handful of other cases across the country, detectives and prosecutors have embarked on probes of cyanide homicides that were each intriguing in their own way and provide perhaps a glimpse of what's going on inside Chicago's investigation into Khan's death.

There is the literal made-for-TV movie story of a University of Wisconsin biochemistry major from Park Ridge who killed at least one man she was involved with. A decade ago, a teenager in Baltimore dissolved cyanide into a friend's soda, sending him into a seizure before he died several days later. In Ohio's Cuyahoga County seven years ago, an emergency room doctor added the toxic poison to a calcium pill and nearly got away with the perfect murder of his wife.

"Whoever it is, is a cunning person," Detective Sgt. Dennis Matejcic, who investigated the Cuyahoga County murder, said of Khan's killer. "To be a poisoner is a diabolical thing. It is a really crafty thing. It's not a fit of anger. It's not a crime where you pull out a gun and shoot someone. You have to plan it. You have to think it out."

'Winter of Frozen Dreams'

The weapon of choice in a murder is an obvious, early question for detectives. But when the weapon is cyanide, it's not always easy to detect, as was clear in the case of Wisconsin's notorious Barbara Hoffman, whose stunning story was turned into a book and movie, both titled "Winter of Frozen Dreams."

Hoffman was charged with slaying two clients she met while working as a masseuse. A jury convicted her in only one of the slayings.

The first victim, Harold Berge, was found in 1977 buried in a snowbank and appeared to have been badly beaten, recalled Jim Doyle, the county prosecutor at that time who later was elected governor of Wisconsin.

Detectives were led to Hoffman soon enough because she had taken a life insurance policy out on Berge, said Doyle, now an attorney in private practice.

It was not until the second victim — whom Hoffman also had a life insurance policy on — was found several months later that things got complicated for investigators.

Gerald Davies was found dead in his bathtub, an empty bottle of Valium nearby but no apparent signs of struggle, Doyle said.

"Now we were in trouble," Doyle said. "We don't have a witness. All we've got is this life insurance policy. We don't have anything that ties her to the body."

The search for Davies' cause of death was launched.

Cyanide is often not found during initial medical exams for a couple of reasons. The poison is not typically screened for in an initial toxicology test. And though cyanide has a distinct bitter almondlike scent that can be detected with close contact from a corpse, only about half of the population can smell it.

"Some people cannot smell almonds," Doyle said. "If we had, we probably would have known right there."

As a result of a persistent detective — who has since died — the lab techs kept trying to find what could have killed Davies, recalled Kenneth Kempfert, an analyst at the Wisconsin state laboratory at the time.

"He kept coming back," Kempfert said of Detective Chuck Lulling. "I had already gone through everything I could think of. And I started talking to a lot of people. One of my colleagues said, 'Did you check for cyanide?' He had worked in law enforcement a long, long time. I don't know why he suggested it, but thank God he did."

Since Hoffman was an honors chemistry student, investigators had assumed that she got her hands on the cyanide in a lab. But they later found a FedEx receipt showing that Davies had ordered the poison from a chemical company, Doyle said.

Doyle said he wasn't certain exactly how the two victims ingested the cyanide.

"These were two very lonely men that met this woman in a massage parlor," Doyle said. "(She) had them very much under her spell. I think we assumed ... they ate something together. But she was meticulous in how she cleaned up those apartments."

Hoffman, who is still serving a life sentence for Berge's death, has remained silent about the crime all these years.

The perfect crime

Murders were rare in the quiet Cleveland suburb of Highland Heights. And if things had gone as planned, the death of Rosie Essa, a mother of two, in a car crash in 2005 wouldn't have drawn suspicion.